Many now credit government for past progress in gender equality, mostly because of late 20th-century legislation that appeared to benefit women in the workplace. This is a distorted view. Few know that government at all levels actually sought to prevent that progress.

A century ago, just as markets were attracting women to professional life, government regulation in the United States specifically targeted women to restrict their professional choices. The regulations were designed to drive them out of offices and factories and back into their homes — for their own good and the good of their families, their communities, and the future of the race.

The new controls — the first round of a century of interventions in the free labor market — were designed to curb the sweeping changes in economics and demographics that were taking place due to material advances in the last quarter of the 19th century. The regulations limited women’s choices so they would stop making what elites considered the wrong decisions.

The real story, which is only beginning to emerge within the academic literature, is striking. It upends prevailing narratives about the relationship between government and women’s rights. Many cornerstones of the early welfare and regulatory state were designed to hobble women’s personal liberty and economic advancement. They were not progressive but reactionary, an attempt to turn back the clock.

Women’s Work Is Not New女性工作不是什么新鲜事

It was the freedom and opportunity realized in the latter period of the 19th century that changed everything for women workers, opening up new lines of employment.

The growth of industrial capitalism meant that women could leave the farm and move to the city. They could choose to leave home without having married — and even stay in the workforce as married women. They enjoyed more choice in education and professional life than ever before.

New clerical jobs, unknown a century earlier, were everywhere to be had. Women’s wages were rising quickly, by an impressive 16 percent from 1890 through 1920. Nor were women working at “exploitative” wages. A Rand corporation 标签：劳动法 | 历史 | 平等 | 性别 | 最低工资 | 管制 | 职业

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The Misogynist Origins of American Labor Law美国劳动法的仇女起源
作者:Jeffrey Tucker @ 2016-02-17
译者:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值)
校对:鳗鱼禅(@鳗鱼禅)
来源:FEE,https://fee.org/articles/government-s-war-on-women-1900-1920/
Many now credit government for past progress in gender equality, mostly because of late 20th-century legislation that appeared to benefit women in the workplace. This is a distorted view. Few know that government at all levels actually sought to prevent that progress.
如今许多人把过去在性别平等上的进步归功于政府，主要是因为二十世纪后期的立法看似让职业女性受益。然而这个观点与现实不符。鲜为人知的是，各个层级的政府都曾企图阻挠这种进步。
A century ago, just as markets were attracting women to professional life, government regulation in the United States specifically targeted women to restrict their professional choices. The regulations were designed to drive them out of offices and factories and back into their homes — for their own good and the good of their families, their communities, and the future of the race.
一个世纪前，正当市场吸引女性进入职场之际，美国的政府管制刻意将女性作为目标人群，限制她们的职业选择。这些管制措施的目的是把女性从办公室和工厂驱赶回家中——为了女性和她们家庭、社区，以及民族的未来。
The new controls — the first round of a century of interventions in the free labor market — were designed to curb the sweeping changes in economics and demographics that were taking place due to material advances in the last quarter of the 19th century. The regulations limited women’s choices so they would stop making what elites considered the wrong decisions.
这些新的控制措施——是整整一个世纪对自由劳动力市场的干涉浪潮的第一波——意在阻止由于十九世纪最后二十五年物质进步所带来的经济和人口统计上的巨大变化。管制措施限制了女性的选择，这样她们就无法做出当时社会精英眼中的“错误”决定。
The real story, which is only beginning to emerge within the academic literature, is striking. It upends prevailing narratives about the relationship between government and women’s rights. Many cornerstones of the early welfare and regulatory state were designed to hobble women’s personal liberty and economic advancement. They were not progressive but reactionary, an attempt to turn back the clock.
Women’s Work Is Not New女性工作不是什么新鲜事
It was the freedom and opportunity realized in the latter period of the 19th century that changed everything for women workers, opening up new lines of employment.
The growth of industrial capitalism meant that women could leave the farm and move to the city. They could choose to leave home without having married — and even stay in the workforce as married women. They enjoyed more choice in education and professional life than ever before.
New clerical jobs, unknown a century earlier, were everywhere to be had. Women’s wages were rising quickly, by an impressive 16 percent from 1890 through 1920. Nor were women working at “exploitative” wages. A Rand corporation study of wage differentials discovered an interesting fact: women’s wages relative to men’s were higher in 1920 than they were in 1980.
新的文书类工作在那之前一个世纪还不存在，而此时已经到处都是。从1890年至1920年女性的工资快速上升，涨幅高达16%。女性的工资并非是“剥削性”的。兰德公司一项关于工资差异的研究揭示了一个有趣的事实：1920年女性工资相对于男性工资的比率要高于1980年。
The Law Intervenes法律介入
And yet, these were also the years in which we first saw government intervention in the labor market, much of it specifically targeting women. As historian Thomas Leonard argues in his spectacular book Illiberal Reformers(2016), an entire generation of intellectuals and politicians panicked about what this could mean for the future of humanity.
然而，在那些年政府首次开始介入劳动力市场，明确针对的目标主要是女性。正如历史学家Thomas Leonard在其力作《非自由的改革者（Illiberal Reformers）》中指出的，整整一代的知识分子和政治家恐慌于女性工资上升会给人类未来带来的影响。
Society must control reproduction and therefore what women do with their lives. So said the prevailing ideology of the age. We couldn’t have a situation in which markets enticed women to leave the control of their families and move to the city.
社会必须控制生育，因而也就必须控制女性的人生。那个时代盛行的意识形态如是说。市场引诱女性离开家庭的控制搬迁到城市，这种情况让人无法接受。
Though they are called Progressives, the reformers’ rhetoric had more in common with the “family values” movement of the 1970s and ‘80s — with pseudoscientific race paranoia playing the role that religion would later play. In many ways, they were the ultimate conservatives, attempting to roll back the tide of history made possible by the advance of the capitalist economy.
尽管他们被称为进步主义者，这些改革者的话语倒跟1970和80年代的“家庭价值观”运动有更多共同点——也包括日后宗教也运用的伪科学种族妄想狂那一套。在许多方面，这些人是终极的保守主义者，他们企图使资本经济的进步带来的历史浪潮倒流。
They were incredibly successful. Over a 10-year period between 1909 and 1919, 40 states restricted the number of hours that women employees could work. Fifteen states passed new minimum wage laws to limit entry-level jobs. Most states created stipends for single-parent families, specifically to incentivize women to reject commercial life, return to protected domesticity, and stop competing with men for wages.
他们大获全胜。1909年至1919年的十年间，40个州限制了女性雇员可以工作的小时数。15个州通过了新的最低工资法来限制初级工作职位。大多数州制定了对单职工家庭的津贴，特意激励女性抵制商业生活回归被保护的家庭生活，同时不再与男人在职场上竞争。
Such laws were completely new in American history (and in almost all of modern history) because they intervened so fundamentally in the right of workers and employers to make any sort of contract. The Progressive agenda involved government deeply in issues that directly affected people’s ability to provide for themselves. It also created unprecedented impositions on both employees and their employers. Such laws would have been inconceivable even 50 years earlier.
这些法律在美国历史上（同时也在几乎整个现代历史上）没有先例。原因在于它们如此根本性地介入了工人和雇主订立任意契约的权利。在一些直接影响人们自给自足能力的议题上，进步主义的议程和政府关联极深。同时进步主义创立了前所未有的税项，同时向雇主和雇员征收。这样的法律即使在五十年前也是不可想象的。
How did all this happen so fast, and why?
政府的干预如何迅速实施？为何能得逞？
The Inferiority of Women女性的劣势
Richard T. Ely, the hugely influential founder of the American Economic Association and the godfather of progressive economics, explained the issue clearly, laying the groundwork for the laws that followed. His 1894 book Socialism and Social Reform expressed a panic about women’s entry into the workforce:
Richard T. Ely 是美国经济协会极具影响力的创建者，也是进步主义经济学的教父。他曾清楚地阐述了这个问题，为之后产生的法律打下了基石。他在1894年发表的著作《社会主义与社会改革》中对女性加入劳动力大军表达了恐慌：

Restrictions should be thrown about the employment of married women, and their employment for a considerable period before and after child-birth should be prohibited under any circumstances. There should also be a restriction of the work-day, as in England, for children and young persons under eighteen, and for women. Such a limitation having beneficial effect upon the health of the community…. Night work should be prohibited for women and persons under eighteen years of age and, in particular, all work injurious to the female organism should be forbidden to women.
应该限制雇用已婚女性，在任何情形下，都应该禁止雇用处于分娩期前后的女性，禁止雇用期应该相当长。我们应该仿效英格兰，限制儿童、十八岁以下的年轻人和女性的工作时长。这种限制利于社会健康发展。……应该禁止女性和不满十八岁者上夜班，尤其应该禁止女性从事那些损害女性生理机体的工作。

If the reference to the “female organism” sounds strange, remember that this generation of intellectuals believed in eugenics — using state force to plan the emergence of the model race — and hence saw women mainly as propagators of the race, not human individuals with the right to choose.
如果书中所谓的“女性生理机体”听着别扭，请记住那一代知识分子相信优生学——即使用国家的力量来制定生产模范种族的计划，因此他们将女性主要看成生育者，而非拥有选择权利的个人。
For anyone who believed that government had a responsibility to plan human production (and most intellectuals at the time did believe this), the role of women was critical. They couldn’t be allowed to do what they wanted, go where they wanted, or make lives for themselves. This was the normal thought pattern for the generation that gave the United States unprecedented legal restrictions on the labor market.
对于任何相信政府有责任对人类生育做规划的人（当时大多数知识分子确实相信）来说，女性的角色至关重要。女性不能被允许做自己想做的事，去她们想去的地方，或过她们自己想要的生活。这就是当时一代人通常的思维模式，而正是这种思维模式让美国政府对劳动力市场进行前所未有的法律限制。
The Supreme Court Weighs In最高法院的介入
Consider the Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon, which considered state legislation on maximum working hours and decided in favor of the state. Oregon was hardly unusual; it was typical of the 20 states that had already passed such laws directed at women’s freedom to choose employment. From the text of Colorado’s law passed in 1903: “No woman” shall “work or labor for a greater number than eight hours in the twenty-four hour day … where such labor, work, or occupation by its nature, requires the woman to stand or be upon her feet.”
看一下Muller诉俄勒冈州这个最高法院案例，最高法院认可对最大工作小时数的州立法，并做了对州政府有利的判决。俄勒冈州并非特别，它只是已经通过此类针对女性选择工作自由的法律的二十个州的典型。在1903年通过的科罗拉多州的法律这样写道：“没有女性”应该“在一天的24小时中进行8小时以上的工作或劳动……这里指的是需要女性站立完成的工作、劳动或职业。”
The decision in Muller v. Oregon, then, ratified such laws all over the country. Today, this case is widely considered the foundation of progressive labor law. What’s not well known is that the brief that settled the case was a remarkable piece of pseudoscience that argued for the inferiority of women and hence their need for special protections from the demands of commercial enterprise. That brief was filed by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis.
于是，最高法院对Muller诉俄勒冈州案的判决正式批准了全国范围内此类法律。今天，该诉讼被普遍认为是进步主义劳动法的基础。而不为人所周知的是，终结该诉讼的那份简报是一篇令人称奇的伪科学文章，该简报论述了女性的劣势，认为女性需要特殊的保护使她们免受商业公司侵害。这份简报正是后来成为最高法院法官的Louis Brandeis提交的。
The Weird and Awful “Brandeis Brief”奇怪又糟糕的“Brandeis简报”
The “Brandeis Brief” argued that the law had to stop the massive influx of women into the workplace because women have “special susceptibility to fatigue and disease,” because female blood has more water in it than men’s blood. Their blood composition also accounts for why women have less focus, energy, and strength generally, according to the brief.
“Brandeis简报”认为法律必须制止大量女性流入劳动力大军，因为女性“特别容易疲劳和生病”，原因是与男性相比，女性血液中含有更高比例的水分。按照这份简报的说法，女性的血液成分比例也解释了为何女性通常在注意力、精力和体力上逊于男性。。
“Physicians are agreed that women are fundamentally weaker than men in all that makes for endurance: in muscular strength, in nervous energy, in the powers of persistent attention and application.”
“医生们认同女性在一切和耐力有关的方面从根本上弱于男性的观点：这些方面包括肌肉力量，神经系统的能量，持续保持注意力和坚持的能力。”
Moreover, “In strength as well as in rapidity and precision of movement women are inferior to men. This is not a conclusion that has ever been contested.”
此外，“不仅在力量上，在速度和动作的精确度上，女性都劣于男性。这一结论从未受到过质疑。”
Long hours are “more disastrous to the health of women than to men,” the brief explained. Government therefore needed to regulate work hours for the “health, safety, morals, and general welfare of women.”
长时间工作“对女性健康的损害要大于对男性，”该简报这样解释道。因此政府需要为了“女性的健康、安全、道德，以及生活幸福”对工作时长进行管制。
Restrictions on work hours were therefore essential. “It is of great hygienic importance on account of the more delicate physical organization of woman,” the brief said, “and will contribute much toward the better care of children and the maintenance of a regular family life.”
因此限制工作时间就至关重要。“考虑到女性生理组织更脆弱，（限制工作时间长度）在卫生上具有重大意义”，该简报这样写道，“这对关爱儿童和维持正常家庭生活都非常有益。”
This brief is also notable for being the first to combine science, however bogus, and public policy in an appeal to the Supreme Court.
这份简报另一个闻名于世的原因，是它首次在向最高法院的上诉中将科学——尽管是冒牌货——与公共政策结合在一起。
Florence Kelley’s Dream of Nonworking Women
Florence Kelley的女性不工作梦想
One might suspect that the entire effort was a male-driven one to stop female progress, but that’s not the case. A leader in the campaign for such labor interventions was writer and activist Florence Kelley. Modern progressives celebrate her activism for maximum work hours, the 10-hour workday, minimum wages, and children’s rights. Indeed, she is considered a great hero by the sanitized version of history that progressives tell each other.
现在可能有人会怀疑这整个事情都是男性驱使的，意在阻止女性进步，但事实并非如此。支持政府介入劳动力市场的运动的一位领导者Florence Kelley是一名作家兼激进分子。现代进步主义者颂扬了她在最大工作时长、十小时工作制、最低工资和儿童权益上的激进主义。没错，在进步主义者相互传颂的历史洁本中，她是一位伟大的英雄。
Before we cheer her accomplishments, however, we should look at Kelley’s driving motivation. Writing in the American Journal of Sociology, she explained that she wanted a minimum wage as a wage floor to stop manufacturing plants and retail outlets from employing women for less than they could otherwise employ men.
但在为她的成就欢呼之前，我们应该看看Kelley的动机。在发表于《美国社会学杂志》的文章上，她解释道，她支持最低工资标准是因为最低工资相当于工资门槛，可以不让工厂和零售商店以低于男性工资的标准雇佣女性。
Retail stores, she wrote, tend to “minimize the employment of men, substituting them for women, girls, and boys, employed largely at less than living wages.” It was precisely such competition from women and children that Kelley intended to stop, so that men could earn higher wages and women could return to traditional roles.
她写道，零售商店倾向于“将雇佣的男性数量最小化，取而代之的是以低于基本生活工资的薪酬雇佣女性，女孩和男孩。”Kelley希望制止的正是这些来自于女性和儿童的就业竞争，这样男性就可以赚更多工资，而女性则可以回归她们的传统角色。
In her book Some Ethical Gains through Legislation (1905), Kelley said that long working hours had to be ended for women because commercial life was introducing “vice” into communities (“vice” for this generation was the preferred euphemism for every manner of sexual sin). Worse, women were choosing commercial life over home “on their own initiative.”
在出版于1905年的《一些通过立法获得的伦理好处》一书中，Kelley认为女性长时间工作必须被阻止，因为商业化生活正在将“恶习”带入社区（那一代人更喜欢用“恶习”这一委婉说法来指代任何与性相关的罪孽 ）。而更糟的是，女性在商业化生活和家庭二者间选择了前者，完全是“自己主动的”。
Kelley considered it necessary to restrict women’s rights for their own “health and morality,” she said, and also to boost men’s wages so women would stay home under the care of their mothers, fathers, suitors, and husbands.
Kelley认为有必要为了女性的“健康和道德”限制女性权利。在书中她写道，限制女性权利也是为了推动男性工资的增长，从而使得女性可以留在家中受她们的父母、求婚者和丈夫们的照顾。
Moreover, to make such work illegal would make “righteous living” more practical for women. If they stopped being rewarded in wages, they would return to domestic life. Kelley even regretted the invention of electricity because it allowed women to work late at factories, when they should be at home reading to children by firelight.
此外，将女性长时间工作定为非法会使得“正直的生活”对女性来说更为实际可行。如果女性不再受工资回报的奖励，她们就会回归家庭生活。Kelley甚至还为电的发明感到遗憾，因为是电让女性可以夜晚在工厂工作，而此时她们本应在家中的炉火旁给孩子们讲故事。
In Kelley’s view, the ideal role of women with children is not to enter commercial life at all: “Family life in the home is sapped in its foundation when mothers of young children work for wages.” It’s an opinion with which some may still sympathize, but should such an opinion be imposed on working families by coercive legislation? For this paragon of progressive social reform, it was clear that lawmakers had to force women back into the home.
在Kelley看来，女性面对孩子的理想角色是完全不进入商业化生活：“当小孩的母亲们为工资工作时，家庭生活的基础被削弱了。”现在有些人依然支持这样的观点，但这样的观点应该通过强制性立法被强加于双职工家庭吗？按照这种进步主义社会改革的范式，立法者必须强迫女性回家。
Florence Kelley and the movement she represented sought to disemploy women and get everyone back to a premodern form of domestic living. She wanted not more rights for women but fewer. The workplace was properly for men, who were to get paid high wages sufficient for the whole family. That was the basis for her support of a range of legislation to drive women out of the workforce and put an end to the new range of options available to them, options that many women were happy to choose.
Florence Kelley与她代表的运动，追求的是女性不被雇佣以及所有人都回归现代之前的家庭生活。她要的不是女性拥有更多权利，而是更少。工作场所适合男性，因为他们在那里能获得高薪酬，足够养活全家人。就是基于这样的理念，她支持通过广泛的立法将女性从工作场所驱逐出去，使女性不再有一系列新的选项——很多女性乐于选择的选项。
Fear the Women of East Prussia对东普鲁士女性的恐惧
All this scholarship and activism is one thing, but what about the popular press?
这些学术研究和激进主义是一回事，那大众传媒又怎么样呢？
Professor Edward A. Ross, author of Sin and Society, spoke out in the New York Times on May 3, 1908. In an article titled “The Price Woman Pays to Industrial Progress,” Ross warned that America’s “fine feminine form” was endangered by commercial society.
Edward A. Ross教授是《罪与社会》一书的作者。他在1908年3月3日纽约时报上一篇题为《女性为产业进步所付出的代价》文章中警告了“精致的女性气质”正在被商业化社会所危害。
If women were permitted to work, an evolutionary selection process would govern their reproduction to the detriment of the human race. The graceful women who would otherwise bear beautiful children would be pushed out of the gene pool and replaced by “squat, splay-footed, wide-backed, flat-breasted, broad-faced, short-necked — a type that lacks every grace that we associate with women.”
如果允许女性工作，进化选择过程会主宰她们的生育，危害人类。本来会生养漂亮孩子的优雅女性会被挤出基因池，取而代之的将是“矮胖、八字脚、宽背、平胸、脸蛋平庸、脖子短的女性——这种类型的女性在任何方面都不能让我们把女性优雅与之相联系。”
Ross’s example: “the women of East Prussia,” who “bear a child in the morning” and “are out in the field in the afternoon.”
Ross举的例子是“东普鲁士女人”，她们“在早晨刚生完孩子”，“下午就下地”。
The professor explained that women who had worked in factories would not make suitable bearers of children. “Think of the discouraging situation of the young man who after he has been married two or three years finds he has a wife who at the age of 28 or 30 has collapsed, become a miserable invalid, suffering aches and pains all the time.” Why, she might find herself “unable to keep the home attractive.” And all of this “because of just a few extra dollars added to the profits of the employer or a few extra dollars saved to the consumer.”
该教授解释说，在工厂工作的女性不会是合适的生养者。“试想一下这样令人沮丧的情况：一个年轻男人在和他妻子结婚两三年后发现她在28或30岁的年纪垮掉了，终日一身病痛。”这样的妻子可能会发现自己“无法把家里弄得漂亮”。而这一切“仅仅是为了让雇主多赚几美元，或是让消费者多省几美元”。
Because of the dangerous combination of employment and natural selection, Ross contended, the government had to extend a hand to help these women by limiting working hours and establishing a high bar to enter the workforce: minimum wages.
由于雇佣劳动和自然选择的危险结合，Ross主张政府必须通过限制工作时长，并对进入劳动力市场设置高门槛——即最低工资——向女性伸出援手。
Only through such enlightened interventions could government save women from the workplace, so that they could return to the maternal duties of rearing “girls who have the qualities of fineness — grace and charm.”
政府只有通过这样高明的干预才能将女性从工作场所中拯救出来，这样女性才能回归母亲的角色，抚养“具有优雅和美丽这些优秀特质的女孩”。
Is This Satire?讽刺否？
If this reads like satire, sadly it is not. Nor were such views unusual in a generation of ruling-class intellectuals, politicians, and activists that embraced eugenics and rejected capitalism as too random, too chaotic, too liberating. Their plan was to reestablish and entrench by law the family and marital structure they believed in, which absolutely precluded a generation of women making individual choices over their own lives.
Every trend panicked the eugenic generation. They fretted about the falling birth rate among those who should be reproducing and the rising birth rate among those who shouldn’t be. They worried about morals, about competition, about health, about culture. Most of all, they regretted the change that a dynamic economy was bringing about.
所有的时代趋向都让相信优生学的一代人恐慌。他们担心本应生养的群体的生育率在下降，而那些本不应生育的群体的生育率却在上升。他们忧虑于道德、竞争、健康和文化。所有问题中他们最担心的是充满活力的经济即将带来的改变。
Thus, from 1900 through 1920, a period that set the stage for a century of interventions in the labor market, hundreds of laws stifling women were passed in every state and at the federal level, too. None dared call it misogyny, but this is real history, however rarely it is told.
因此，1900至1920年间，政府为干预劳动力市场打好了舞台，这种干预持续了一个世纪。数以百计窒息女性的法律在所有州以及联邦层面上通过。没人敢称之为厌女，但这是真实的历史，尽管很少被说起。
Feminists against Regulation对抗管控的女权主义
Laws that disemployed thousands of women nationwide led to vast protests. The Equal Opportunity League, an early feminist organization in New York, lobbied the state legislature to repeal the bans on work. And it received quite the press coverage.
使全国范围内成千上万的女性失去工作的法律导致了大范围的抗议。机会平等联盟是一个位于纽约的早期女权组织，它游说州立法机构废除对女性工作的禁令，得到了相当多的媒体报道。
“So-called ‘welfare’ legislation is not asked for or wanted by real working women,” the league said. “These ‘welfare’ bills are drafted by self-styled social uplifters who assert that working women do not know enough to protect themselves.”
“所谓的“福利”立法不是真正在工作的女性要求或内心想要的，”该联盟如是说。“这些“福利”法案由自封的社会提升者起草，他们认为工作的女性不知如何保护自己。”
“Are women people? Women are no longer the wards of the State and a law that is unconstitutional for a man voter is equally unconstitutional for a woman voter.”
“女性也是人吧？女性不再是州政府的被监护人，对男性投票人来说违宪的法律对女性投票人来说一样违宪。”
“Working at night is not more injurious than working in the daytime,” the league argued. “Many women prefer to work at night because the wage is higher, opportunities for advancement greater, and women with children can enjoy being with their child after school hours in the day time.”
“在晚上工作不比在白天工作更有害”，该联盟这样认为。“许多女性喜欢在晚上工作是因为工资更高，升职的机会更大，而且有孩子的女性可以在白天孩子放学后和孩子在一起。”
In fact, the phrase “equal pay for equal work” was not created to mandate higher wages for women. It was a league slogan invoked to argue against laws that made it “a crime to employ women even five minutes after the eight-hour day.” The phrase emerged as a preferred slogan to protest in favor of free markets, not against them.
事实上，“同工同酬”这一警句的出现并非为了强制提高女性工资。它是联盟的一句口号，用来反对那些认定“8小时工作时间之外即使多雇佣女性5分钟也是犯罪”的法律。这一广受欢迎警句的是作为亲市场而非反对自由市场的口号而提出的。
The Equal Opportunity League also passionately opposed the minimum wage law. Such laws, it argued, “while purporting to be for [women’s] benefit, would really be a serious handicap to them in competing with men workers for desirable positions.”
平等机会联盟也积极地反对最低工资法。联盟认为这样的法律“尽管本意是为了照顾（女性）利益，实质上却让女性在与男性工人竞争好职位时受到严重妨碍”。
In short, the conclusion of the League is that these proposed bills and laws, ostensibly intended to protect and shield the woman worker, will, if permitted to stand, unquestionably work her industrial ruin and throw her back into the slough of drudgery out of which she is just emerging after centuries of painful, laborious effort to better her condition. ("Women’s Work Limited by Law," New York Times, January 18, 1920)
简单来说，联盟的结论是这些提议中的法案和法律表面上意在保护女性工人，实际上一旦通过则毫无疑问会毁坏女性的职业生涯，将女性赶回家务重活的泥沼。而女性在经历数个世纪痛苦艰难的努力后才刚刚脱离这一泥沼而改善了自己的状况。（《女性的工作被法律所限》，《纽约时报》1920年1月18日。）
Restriction Becomes Liberation?限制变成了解放？
The fairy tale version of history says that during the 20th century, government freed women to become newly empowered in the workplace. The reality is exactly the opposite. Just as the market was granting women more choices, government swept in to limit them in the name of health, purity, family values, and social uplift. Such laws and regulations are still around today, though they have been recharacterized in a completely different way. As Orwell might say, somewhere along the way, restriction became liberation.
历史的童话版本说，在20世纪政府给予了女性自由，让女性在工作场所拥有了权利。真相恰好相反。市场给予女性更多的选择，而政府却插手进来以健康、纯洁、家庭价值观和社会地位提升等名义限制女性的选择。这类法律和法规在今天仍然存在，虽然它们以完全不同的方式被重新描绘。正如奥威尔所说，在通往动物庄园路途中，不知从何处起，限制变成了解放。
(Author’s note: I’m grateful to Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers for providing the footnotes I followed to write this piece. Also, much more rethinking of Progressive Era politics and its impact on the family is discussed in Steven Horwitz’s Hayek’s Modern Family, newly published by Palgrave.)
（作者附言：非常感激Thomas Leonard的《非自由的改革者》，循着该书提供的脚注，我写下了此文。另外，对进步时代的政治及其对家庭之影响的更多再思考，在Steven Horwitz所著的由Palgrave最新出版的《哈耶克的现代家庭》一书中有更多讨论。）
（编辑：辉格@whigzhou）
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In the city of Seattle, Washington, Joe Salvatore runs The Recycling Depot, a recycling business employing about 20 people. Not far away, Bobby Denovski is eking out a living at Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta with a handful of employees, and Remo Borracchini is busy running an Italian Bakery. The story is the same across Washington State and across the nation: Businesses are fighting every day to service customers, treat employees well, and simply stay open.

Unfortunately in the city of Seattle, it is about to get much more difficult for business owners to continue the fight. Pushed forward primarily by socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, the first phase of a new minimum wage law went into effect on April 1, 2015, and the law will eventually bring all businesses to a $15 minimum wage, more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

The law is a graduated system with different pay scales and timelines for businesses above and below 500 employees. For businesses with 501 employees or more, the April 1, 2015 minimum wage was set a(more...)

Seattle’s Coming $15 Minimum Wage 西雅图即将实施15美元最低工资标准
作者：Clinton Alexander @ 2015-10-28
译者：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
校对：混乱阈值（@混乱阈值）
来源：The New American，www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/21844-seattles-coming-15-minimum-wage
In the city of Seattle, Washington, Joe Salvatore runs The Recycling Depot, a recycling business employing about 20 people. Not far away, Bobby Denovski is eking out a living at Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta with a handful of employees, and Remo Borracchini is busy running an Italian Bakery. The story is the same across Washington State and across the nation: Businesses are fighting every day to service customers, treat employees well, and simply stay open.
Joe Salvatore在华盛顿州西雅图市经营一家叫做“回收站”的回收企业，雇佣了大约20人。不远处，Bobby Denovski正惨淡经营着“帕记披萨和意粉”店，雇有少量员工。而Remo Borracchini则在为经营一家名为“意大利烘焙”的小店而上下奔波。这种故事在华盛顿州和整个美国都很普遍：为了服务顾客、善待雇员以及仅仅是保持开业，企业每天都在奋斗。
Unfortunately in the city of Seattle, it is about to get much more difficult for business owners to continue the fight. Pushed forward primarily by socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, the first phase of a new minimum wage law went into effect on April 1, 2015, and the law will eventually bring all businesses to a $15 minimum wage, more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
不幸地是，在西雅图市，企业主想要继续奋斗下去，将来会变得更加艰难。主要由信奉社会主义的女市议员Kshama Sawant推动的新最低工资法已于2015年4月1日进入第一阶段的实施，并最终将对所有企业实行15美元最低工资标准，相当于将目前时薪7.25美元的联邦最低工资翻了一倍以上。
The law is a graduated system with different pay scales and timelines for businesses above and below 500 employees. For businesses with 501 employees or more, the April 1, 2015 minimum wage was set at $11 an hour. For the next two years, on January 1 of each year, the wage increases, rising from the current $11 per hour to $13, reaching $15 an hour on January 1, 2018.
新法建立的是一个分级制度，对于雇员超过和低于（及等于）500人的企业分别设立了不同的工资标准和时间表。对于雇有501或更多雇员的企业，2015年4月1日开始最低工资是时薪11美元。在接下来的两年内，每年1月1日提一次工资，从现在的时薪11美元提到13美元，到2018年1月1日实现时薪15美元。
For companies paying at least $1.50 per hour toward a silver level medical benefits plan, the minimum wage goes to $12.50 on January 1 of 2016, then $13.50 in 2017, and finally $15 an hour in January of 2018. As stated on Seattle’s website seattle.gov, “Once Seattle’s minimum wage reaches $15.00/hour, payments toward medical benefits no longer impact employees’ minimum wage.”
如果企业每小时至少帮员工支付1.5美元给白银级医疗福利计划，那么它们的最低工资从2016年1月1日开始将是12.5美元，2017年是13.5美元，最终到2018年1月达到15美元。西雅图市的网站seattle.gov上称：“一旦西雅图的最低工资达到15美元每小时，那么医疗福利付费就不会再影响雇员的最低工资标准。”
On April 1, 2015, small-business wages were set at $11 an hour as well. For companies at or below the 500-employee mark, the $15 minimum wage is set to be phased in over the course of the next decade. Again, counting medical benefits and other factors such as tips, the total compensation varies. By the year 2021, the minimum wage will be $15 with tips and health insurance factored in, and in 2025, small businesses must meet the $15 minimum wage without credit for tips or insurance.
2015年4月1日起，小企业的工资也被设定为时薪11美元。对于雇员数量在500名或更少的公司，最低工资标准将在接下来的10年内逐步施行。同样，把医疗福利和其他因素如小费算在内，总工资也会不同。到2021年，把小费和健康保险算在内，最低工资将是15美元，而到2025年，小企业必须符合刨除小费或保险后15美元的最低工资标准。
President Obama has repeatedly urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour. For this reason it would behoove those across the nation to pay special attention to the city of Seattle. Seattle is tucked away in the northwestern corner of the nation; however, as the city squeezes its businesses for more and more money, it may become ground zero for the minimum wage fight.
奥巴马总统已经反复敦促国会将联邦最低工资从时薪7.25美元提升至时薪10.10美元。因此之故，全美理应特别关注西雅图市。西雅图深藏于美国的西北角落，不过，随着这座城市从其企业身上不断榨取越来越多的钱财，它可能成为最低工资之战的引爆点。
Reasons for the Law立法理由
Since being first enacted in 1928, the idea of a “minimum wage” has been sold as a law that will benefit the poorest sectors of our society. According to Cornell Law School, “The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.”
自1928年首次创设为法律以来，“最低工资”概念就被作为一种有利于社会中贫困群体的法律向大众兜售。根据康奈尔大学法学院的说法，“设计最低工资是为了制定一种最低生活水平，以保障雇员的健康和福利。”
Likewise, from the city of Seattle’s own website we find, “Citywide minimum wage laws offer local governments a powerful tool for helping low-income workers and families in their communities. Such measures also have significant impact on businesses and how they operate.” Minimum wage advocates have held that it is possible to set a minimum pay scale and have no ill effect on jobs.
同样，我们也能从西雅图市自己的网站上看到，“全市范围内的最低工资法，能给地方政府提供一种强大工具，以帮助各自社区中的低收入工人和家庭。这种措施也将对企业及其运营方式产生巨大影响。”最低工资的鼓吹者历来相信，设定一种最低工资标准而不对就业产生任何不良影响是可能的。
Operating under the assumption that simply raising the minimum wage will guarantee said wage, the people pushing for the $15 minimum wage claim that it has the power to lift the poor to that “new standard of living.” Is this true? Will it indeed lift the needy in our communities to another level, or is it a false assumption, one that will cause irreparable damage to business and industry?
依着“简单地将最低工资标准提升一下就能实现这一工资收入”的假定行事，那些争取15美元最低工资的人就此宣称，这一标准有能力将穷人提升到“新的生活水平”。这是真的吗？它真的能将我们社区中的贫困人口提升一个水平？还是说这是个错误的假设，将会对企业和实业造成不可弥补的伤害？
Asking the Businesses问问企业
Several business owners in Seattle were kind enough to give their own opinions of Seattle’s minimum wage law and explain how it will have a negative impact not only on their businesses, but on those people it was designed to help.
承蒙西雅图一些企业主的好意，向我们表达了他们对西雅图最低工资法的个人看法，并解释了它会如何产生负面影响，而这种负面影响不仅仅会作用于他们自己的企业，而且会作用于立法本来意图帮助的那些人。
Walter McLaughlin has been in Small Business Administration (SBA) lending for 27 years. He won the Washington State Financial Services Champion award in 2005. Concerning the minimum wage law in Seattle, McLaughlin said in an e-mail statement:
Walter McLaughlin已在“小企业管理局”（SBA）借贷项目工作了27年。他于2005年获得了“华盛顿州金融服务冠军”的称号。关于西雅图的最低工资法，McLaughlin在一份电邮声明中说：

In economics, there is a principal called “zero sum gain” in which an increase is offset by a loss of equal amount. When a small business (and per the SBA’s size standards, over 99% of U.S. companies qualify as small) sees its operating costs increase, it has three options: 1) absorb the cost, 2) raise prices or 3) lower expenses. Since businesses don’t operate with the intention of losing money, the irony of a drastic increase in the minimum wage is that in order for employers to adjust, the net effect may be higher inflation and unemployment, disproportionately hurting the very same group the $15 minimum wage was intended to help.
在经济学中，有个原理叫做‘零和受益’，其中增加值被等量的损失所抵消。如果一家小企业（按照SBA的规模标准，美国超过99%的公司算小企业）的运营成本上升，它就面临三个选项：1）承担这一成本，2）提高价格，或者3）降低开支。由于企业运营的目的并不是为了损失金钱，所以最低工资急剧提升的反讽在于，雇主为了实现调整，最终净效果可能是通胀升高及失业率升高，这对于15美元最低工资标准意图帮助的那个群体损害相对更大。

McLaughlin lays out three ways in which the new Seattle minimum wage law will play out as it’s implemented: a loss to the business owner (absorb the cost), a cost to the general public (raise prices), or a reduction in expenses (possible job loss).
McLaughlin提出了西雅图最低工资新法实施之后最终将走向的三种路径：企业主出现损失（承担成本），一般公众的损失（提高价格），或者削减开支（可能出现工作岗位流失）。
A Loss to the Business Owner企业主出现损失
For those people who have never run a business, the absorption of the additional cost may seem to be the easiest and most straightforward solution to the requirement to pay employees more. But contrary to what those who have never had the experience of sitting down with a company’s balance sheets might think, all business owners are not jet-setting CEOs with profits just flowing in.
对于从未经营过任何企业的人来说，为了达到支付雇员更高工资的要求，由企业承担额外成本似乎是最简单、最直接的解决办法。但与这些从未看过任何一个公司财务收支表的人所想的相反，并非所有企业主都是乘坐直升机的CEO，利润滚滚而来。
At The Recycling Depot, general manager Joe Salvatore stated, “What these people don’t take into consideration is that when you raise the wage, you’re raising the Labor and Industries Insurance cost because that amount is affected by the wages. I have already talked to several small businesses in the area and there’s not a single one who is making tons and tons of money where they’re just going to be able to absorb these costs.”
“回收站”的总经理Joe Salvatore说，“这些人没有考虑到，如果提高工资，你还会提高劳动和工业保险成本，因为后者会受工资影响。我已经和本地区的数家小企业谈过，没有一家是在成吨成吨地赚钱，没有一家能够直接承担这些成本。”
In other words, while the absorption of minor costs may be a normal and constant part of running a business, the bottom line is a major factor. At Padrino’s Pizza and Pasta, Bobby Denovski echoed Salvatore’s sentiment: “We aren’t a large company with huge profits. As a small business the cost of labor is one of the main factors. Fifteen dollars an hour, that’s a lot of money to ask from a small business.”
换句话说，尽管运营一家企业时，承受并消化小量的成本可能是个司空见惯、总在发生的事，但盈亏底线是个主要的因素。“帕记披萨和意粉”店的Bobby Denovski呼应了Salvatore的观点：“我们不是那种利润巨大的大公司。对于小企业来说，主要因素之一就是劳工成本。15美元一小时，这种要价对于小企业来说可是一大笔钱。”
When asked what effect he could foresee the escalating minimum wage law having on his business, Denovski commented, “It could put us all out looking for jobs. We have a couple more years paying on the loan for our restaurant. If we end up paying this $15 an hour, we are honestly in danger of losing it.”
当被问及不断升级的最低工资法将来会对其生意产生何种影响时，Denovski评论说，“我们可能都会被迫出去找工作了。我们的餐馆还有几年贷款需要还。如果最终我们需要支付15美元的时薪，我们真的可能会失去餐馆。”
Likewise, The Recycling Depot, as a metals recycling business, is subject to sometimes-dramatic market fluctuations. Metal values can skyrocket, allowing ample room to treat employees well, and values can plummet, leaving the business struggling to survive. Said Salvatore of the times when the market is up, “We do take care of our employees during those times. We give bonuses and things like that. However what about the lean times? This is going to have a dramatic effect on us during the lean times. You can’t just start taking the pay away.”
同样，从事金属回收生意的“回收站”也承受着市场波动，时不时还非常剧烈。金属价格可能飙升，此时企业就有足够的空间来更好对待员工，但价格也可能跳水，那样企业就只能竭力求生。谈及市场向好的时候，Salvatore说，“那种时候我们确实会照顾自己的员工。我们提供奖金等类似东西。但生意差的时候呢？在生意差的时候，这会给我们造成巨大的影响。减少支出都来不及。”
A Cost to the General Public一般公众的损失
If costs cannot be simply absorbed by the company, another option is to raise the price of the product. Bobby Denovski stated, “The only thing I can do is to raise the prices. I worry that the demand for pizza in the community will not support the prices we will have to go to when the wages go up.” How much is a pizza worth to those in his community? How about a gallon of milk? Those claiming the minimum wage will have no ill effect on the community should be asking themselves these questions, because at some point most small business owners such as Denovski must find a way to recoup these costs.
如果成本不能简单地由企业承担，还有一个选项就是提高产品价格。Bobby Denovski称，“我唯一能做就是提高价格。如果工资上涨，我们就必须抬高价位，我担心我所在社区的披萨需求不足以支持我们的这种要价。”在他的社区，一份披萨应该要价多少？一加仑牛奶呢？那些声称最低工资不会对社区产生不良影响的人应当问问自己这些问题，因为到了某个时候，绝大多数小企业主，如Denovski一样，都会想办法转移这些成本。
Referring again to fluctuating values in the metals market, Salvatore stated, “We’re very dependent on the global prices of metals. When the metal values drop, we’re making less money and our margins shrink. During times like this there are a lot of businesses just trying to stay afloat.” And so he is forced to try to pass on the costs in another manner.
Salvatore再一次谈及金属市场的波动价格：“我们对全球金属价格有很大的依赖。金属价格下跌时，我们赚的钱就减少，利润收缩。碰到这种时候，大量的企业只是谋求维持下去。”所以他将被迫以另一种方式把成本传递出去。
As a metals recycling business, The Recycling Depot purchases metals from other businesses and from the general public, then sells those metals based on current market prices. Because Salvatore has no control over the sale price (dictated by global supply and demand), the only thing he can do is to drop the prices he is paying the public for those metals, illustrating the second point (a cost to the public) in another light.
从事金属回收行业的“回收站”从别的企业及一般公众手里收购金属，然后依照当前市场价格将这些金属卖出。由于Salvatore没有办法控制销售价格（它由全球供给和全球需求决定），他唯一能做的就是压低他支付给公众的金属收购价格，这从另一个方面说明了我们提出的第二点（公众的损失）。
Lower Expenses降低开支
Absent the ability to absorb the higher wages or pass on the costs to someone else, a third way to compensate is to lower expenses. On the surface this sounds harmless enough. However, it often means the disappearance of jobs.
要是没有能力承担更高的工资或将成本传递给其他人，那么还有第三种弥补办法，那就是降低开支。表面看来这种做法相当无害。但是，它通常意味着工作岗位消失。
At Borracchini’s Bakery in Seattle, a business that has been open for 94 years, Remo Borracchini has a long history of hiring youth. “I myself have probably hired 1,500 young people over the years. I have had people come here as teenagers and stay here as much as 25 years, so they came and learned a trade,” said Borracchini.
西雅图的“博记烘焙”是一家已经开业94年的企业，店主Remo Borracchini 历来喜欢雇佣年轻人。“多年以来，我本人可能雇佣了1500个年轻人。我手下有些人，来的时候还是个少年，然后就在这工作了25年。他们来我这里，学会了一门生意”，Borrachini这样说道。
He has brought in high-school students who have never worked a job and started them washing pots and pans, stocking shelves, and mopping floors. While the wages many of these new hires make is not a large sum, Borracchini sees a bigger picture:
他曾招过一些从未干过任何工作的高中生，让他们从刷盘子洗碗、装货架、拖地开始干起。尽管这些新进员工所赚取的工资并不多，Borracchini看到的却是一幅更大的图景：

It’s not that we’re just looking for cheap labor. It’s the understanding that you’re doing something for these young people other than sending them out to wander aimlessly through the neighborhoods. You see, I do believe we have a responsibility to our young people. There used to be internships throughout industry. Now that has changed.
并不是说我们只是为了找些廉价劳工。我们的理解是，你是在帮这些年轻人做点什么事，没有让他们在社区中没头没脑地游窜。跟你说，我确实相信我们对年轻人负有责任。过去，各行各业都有实习。现在事情发生了变化。
They used to go into places like print shops, or bakeries and come to begin learning a trade; that was their reimbursement, they were learning something that would benefit them throughout their life. Now they’ve passed a law saying they have to be paid a wage. So what happens? If you’re going to have to pay someone who doesn’t know anything, you might as well pay someone who already knows something.
过去，他们要去文印店或面包店等类似地方，开始学习一门行当；那相当于他们的回报，他们是在学习某种将会受益终身的东西。现在有人制定一条法律，说是必须给他们支付工资。那会发生什么呢？如果有人啥都不懂，你也必须要支付他工资，那你还不如向那些懂点什么的人支付工资。

Continued Borracchini,
Borracchini继续说，

Businesses like McDonald’s, they built their empire not on a philosophy of it being a high paying job, but to take kids who have never worked before, teach them a little bit about work ethic and how to perform, and they move on to better opportunities when they have shown they have a bit of ability. You’ll begin to see the order screens in every type of McDonald’s scenario. Look at the jobs they’re eliminating right there. Kids who would be learning to show up for work on time, learning how to interact with the public, how to have a bit of work ethic.
像麦当劳这种企业帝国，它的建基哲学并不是它之作为一种高薪职位，而是它招募此前从未工作过的人，教给他们一点工作伦理和如何履职，然后当他们表现出具备一定能力时，就能前进一步，迈向更好的机会。以后你会看到各式各样的麦当劳式情景，大家都开始用点菜屏。看看他们正在消灭的工作。孩子们本来可以学会按时上班，学会如何与公众打交道，如何具备一点工作伦理。

Salvatore echoed Borracchini, stating that in order to recoup labor costs, jobs would almost certainly be cut, “at least cutting hours back if not completely doing away with jobs. The well is not bottomless.”
Salvatore呼应了Borrachini，并说，为了弥补劳工成本，工作岗位几乎肯定会被削减，“如果不是彻底废除岗位，至少需要减少雇佣时长。井中的水毕竟是有限的。”
At Padrino’s, a clearly concerned Denovski stated, “Right now it’s [the minimum wage] at $11 an hour and it is already difficult for me and my partner to keep the bills paid and the employees paid. They’re going to be raising that expense up to $15, but none of our other costs will be going down. I honestly don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“帕记”的Denovski明显很是担心，他说，“现在的最低工资是时薪11美元，而我和我的合伙人已经感到难以偿付账单、支付员工工资。他们还要将这一开支提高到15美元，而我们的其他成本都不会降低。我真的不知道我们有什么办法。”
Salvatore then commented on a worst-case scenario, “Eventually we have to tighten the ropes, and then what happens when there’s nothing left in the reserve?” Indeed, what does happen? What happens to the low-skill workers looking for a job? Where will the teenager or young adult go for training when McDonald’s has automated order screens? As Borracchini said, “It is the internship and low-skill jobs which will be cut. We will have sent them back out onto the street.”
然后，Salvatore就最坏的情形作了评论，“最终我们必须拉紧裤腰带，如果没有剩下任何储备，那会发生什么呢？”确实，会发生什么呢？对于那些找工作的低技术工人，会发生什么呢？当麦当劳开始用自动点菜屏时，少年或刚刚成年的人们要去哪里接受训练？正如Borracchini所说，“被削减的会是那些实习岗位和低技术岗位。我们将不得不把他们送回街上。”
Help or Harm?帮助还是伤害？
Seattle businesses obviously view the new minimum wage law with quite a bit of trepidation. It is easy to see why. These companies will have to find a way to recuperate the costs one way or another. No matter how it ends up happening, it will be a detriment to the community and the city.
西雅图的企业显然正以相当程度的恐惧看待最低工资新法。很容易发现原因所在。这些公司都必须寻找各种办法来弥补成本。不管最终会发生什么，它对于社区和整个城市都是一种损害。
In “The Tax & Budget Bulletin” by The Cato Institute dated March 2014, Joseph J. Sabia, associate professor of economics at San Diego State University, explains how a minimum wage affects the poor’s standard of living and employment opportunities:
在加图研究所2014年3月的“税收与预算简报”中，圣迭戈州立大学的经济学副教授Joseph J. Sabia就最低工资会如何影响穷人的生活水平和就业机会作出了解释：

The bulletin concludes that minimum wage increases almost always fail to meet proponents’ policy objectives and often hurt precisely the vulnerable populations that advocates wish to help. The weight of the science suggests that policymakers should abandon higher minimum wages as an antiquated anti-poverty tool. Minimum wages deter employment and are poorly targeted to those in need.
简报的结论是，提高最低工资几乎总是不能实现其支持者的政策目标，而且通常都会恰好伤害到鼓吹者们想要帮助的脆弱群体。科学表明，决策者们应当放弃提高最低工资这种早已过时的反贫困工具。最低工资伤害就业，而且对于身处困境的人们来说真是南辕北辙。

His words echo the business owners quoted here. Says Borracchini, “I can sympathize with someone who is trying to raise a family. Fifteen dollars is not a lot of money. It’s very difficult. However, there is an element of society who through laws like this are being denied a great privilege. The opportunity to learn how to work.”
他的言论正与我们此处所引企业主的言论互相呼应。Borracchini说，“有人要努力养活一家人，这我能够同情。15美元并不是很大一笔钱。世事艰难。但是，通过这种法律，社会中有一部分人将无法享有一项重要的权利。那就是学会如何工作的机会。”
The bottom line is that the minimum wage law was supposedly created to help the poor and needy in our society. However, it is the low-skill and poor who will feel the effect first and foremost, and who will find it much more difficult to acquire the job skills needed to raise the value of their labor to or above the minimum wage.
这里的底线是，最低工资法的创设，本意是为了帮助我们社会中的穷人和急需帮助的人群。但是，首当其冲感受到其影响的就是低技术人口和贫困人口，他们将发现，要将自己的劳动价值提高到或超过最低工资，就必须获得工作技能，而这将变得比以前更难。
As voices cry ever louder for an increased federal minimum wage, the stories of small businesses across the nation need to be brought into the spotlight — businesses reaching out to unskilled youth willing to put in time training. Companies managing a tight bottom line can’t handle the extra expense of yet another increase in wages.
随着提高联邦最低工资的呼声与日俱增，有必要将全美小企业的故事带到台前——这些企业都在向那些技能不足但愿意花时间接受训练的年轻人敞开双臂。盈亏底线很紧张的公司没有办法应对未来工资再次上涨所带来的额外开支。
The heart of our nation does not lie within the halls of Congress but rather in the bakeries, pizza shops, recycling centers, and myriad other small businesses. It is not in the backroom deals between politicians where the effects of these laws will be felt, but rather in the checking accounts of struggling businesses.
我们民族的心脏并不位于国会的办公大楼里，而是位于各家烘焙店、披萨店、回收中心以及种种其他小企业中。要感受到这些法律的效果，不是去看政客之间的暗箱交易，而需要去看艰难度日的各家企业的存款账户。
（编辑：辉格@whigzhou）
*注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

Troubling Signs of Minimum Wage Damage in Los Angeles洛杉矶最低工资带来的破坏令人不安
作者：Adam Ozimek @ 2015-8-18
译者：带菜刀的诗人（@带菜刀的诗人_）
一校：迈爸（@麦田的字留地）
来源：Moody’s Analytics，https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/datapoints/256050/Troubling-Signs-of-Minimum-Wage-Damage-in-Los-Angeles/
The recent spate of local minimum wage hikes around the country is generating a lot of new data for economists to study, but so far I’ve been hesitant to focus on case studies.
最近，遍及全国的一大波地方最低工资上涨浪潮，为经济学家的研究带来的了大量新鲜数据，但是到目前为止我仍在犹豫是否要将注意力集中于个案研究。
There are a lot of reasons to be cautious in looking for minimum wage impacts on a city-by-city basis: it is easy to cherry pick, employment data at local levels can be volatile, growth rates rather than levels may be affected, and areas with stronger than average economies may be raising minimum wages.
我们有许多理由对按城市考察最低工资的影响保持谨慎：这很容易因选择性取样而造成确认偏差，地方层面的就业数据可能不够稳定，受影响的可能是增长率而不是绝对水平，并且高于平均经济水平的区域更可能提高最低工资水平。
In addition, disagreement in the literature on minimum wages illustrates that different comparisons or controls can easily give different answers. However, as I’ve been watching the data, one case is becoming too stark to ignore: Los Angeles.
另外，学术文献中关于最低工资水平的争议表明，不同的比较方式或变量控制很容易得出不同结果。然而，就我一直在观察的数据而言，有一个例子过于惹眼以至于无法被忽略：洛杉矶。
In September, 2014, Los Angeles City approved hike to the minimum wage for hotel workers of $15.37. The wage went into effect in July, 2015, for hotels with 300 or more rooms, and will go into effect July, 2016 for 150-plus-room hotels.
2014年9月，洛杉矶市通过了将酒店工人最低工资水平上调到15.37美元的决议。对于客房数量超过300间的酒店，新的工资条例将在2015年7月生效，而数量超过150间客房的酒店则在2016年7月执行该法。
Given the delay in the wage hike, it is not obvious that employment would be affected already. But BLS data on the accommodations industry (NAICS 721) for Los Angeles county is starting to look like serious impacts are occurring already.
考虑到工资水平上调时间上的延迟，并不能马上就看到它给就业率带来的影响。但是根据劳工统计局（BLS）关于洛杉矶住宿行业（北美工业分类系统 721）的数据，严重的影响看来已然出现。
【图1】洛杉矶酒店业开始出现失业情况
The decline in year-to-year growth rates starts to show up in October, 2014, when growth falls below 2% for the first time in more than two years. Then in January, 2015, employment starts to actually shrink, and by June it is down 4.8% year over year. Zooming out, it’s clear that job losses of this magnitude in Los Angeles are not seen outside of recessions.
年度增长速度在2014年10月开始出现下滑，增速首次连续超过两年低于2%。2015年1月，就业率实际上开始萎缩，到6月同比下降4.8%。而当我们放眼全局，很明显，洛杉矶这种程度的职位流失在只有在衰退中才能看到。
【图2】洛杉矶酒店业出现衰退迹象
The BLS does not report seasonally adjusted data, but I did the adjustment using the same procedure they use and found accommodations have fallen by around 1,000 jobs so far this year.
劳工局并不会每个季度都发布调整后的数据，但是我使用跟他们一样的程序得出了自己的调整数据，并且发现到今年为止，住宿行业已经失去了约1000个工作岗位。
There are, of course, a lot of reasons for caution here. Data from the more exhaustive QCEW survey suggests the decline in job growth in accommodations is overstated in the data I use here through the end of 2014. Unfortunately, QCEW data is only available through December, 2014.
当然，我们有许多理由慎于判断。来自劳工局的就业与工资水平季度统计（QCEW）中的更详实数据表明，我使用的2014年住宿行业就业增长率的下降被高估了。不幸的是，可供使用的QCEW数据只到2014年12月。
This means that some of the job losses may be revised away in the future. However, the declines through June are large enough that is seems very likely that real employment declines are occurring.
这意味着被我计入的一些职位流失在将来可能会被更正过来。然而，整个6月的就业率下降已经足够大了，以至于看起来似乎很有可能真正的就业率下降正在发生。
Another reason to be cautious is that the employment effects are showing up after the hike passed but before it takes effect. Businesses are forward looking so this is not impossible, but the magnitude of the declines before the wage hike takes effect are somewhat surprising especially for the service sector. Finally, the hotel minimum wage hike is only affecting the City of Los Angeles, and this data is for the larger county of Los Angeles.
另一个警惕的理由是，就业效应是在上调最低工资的法案通过之后但是生效之前显现出来的。但是，在上调工资生效之前就业率下降的程度有点让人吃惊，特别是服务部门。然而商业具有前瞻性，所以这也不是没有可能。最终，上调酒店最低工资的浪潮仅仅波及洛杉矶市，这项数据覆盖了范围更大的洛杉矶县。
Reason for concern关注的理由
Overall, the caveats here are significant, and despite the stark and significant decline in employment, the data should be considered just very suggestive at this point. However, it does represent one more reason to be concerned about the forthcoming minimum wage hike that will be affecting all Los Angeles County workers in all industries.
总的说来，不详预兆是足够明显的，但尽管就业出现了明显且重大的下降，目前的数据仍应被视为只是推测性的。然而，它的确呈现了另一个理由，让我们关切即将到来的最低工资提升是否会影响到洛杉矶县所有工人。
The service sector, and hotels in particular, should be less responsive to minimum wage hikes than many other lower wage employers. Tourism industries should be less price elastic than tradeables like manufacturing, and hotels don’t have a lot of alternatives, which makes transitioning the building to some less-labor-intensive use less likely.
服务部门，特别是酒店，应该比许多其他较低工资水平雇主对这次工资上调的反应更小。旅游业应该比生产贸易货物的制造业表现出更低的价格弹性，并且酒店没有很多替代选择，这使得酒店建筑物不太可能转换成一些低劳动密度的用途上。
Hotels, in other words, should have been more safe. Instead, they seem to be taking a big hit. While what we are seeing in Los Angeles so far is nowhere near conclusive, it should worry those who have been less concerned about big minimum wage hikes.
换而言之，酒店行业原本应该是比较安全的。但是，看来他们即将遭受重创。就目前我们在洛杉矶所看到的景象还远不稳定，应该担忧的倒是那些对最低工资水平大幅上调仍缺乏关注的人们。
（编辑：辉格@whigzhou）
*注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。